


waste it on me

by stngds



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death, Character Study, Developing Relationship, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Minor Character Death, Other, Relationship Study, Romantic Friendship, Unofficial Sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 03:48:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16485350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stngds/pseuds/stngds
Summary: It’s hard to make herself move again, but she clings to Matthias’ voice, the promise she made him, her yearning to know they might see each other again, in whatever lies at the other side of life. Logically, she understands she’s a little delusional, that she clings to the memory of his voice on her own, that if there’s haunting done, it’s her and her inability to let go that might disturb Matthias’ final rest.( OR Nina, in the aftermath of Matthias' death - because we never got to see it in the actual series)





	waste it on me

**Author's Note:**

> Nina deserves the world and i tried to give it to her in this fic.

She is tired. She knows Matthias is too. He presses his fingers to the palm of his hands, something he only does to still the effects of his exhaustion. The lines on her forehead remain even as she tries to reassure others with a smile, and that’s how they’re not truly fooled. But besides being tired, Nina is also afraid. Terrified that their luck will run out, that at some point their plan will fall to chaos – and that point will come way too soon.

She remembers how Colm has looked at them, like they were actually worth something, like the wrongs that have been given out to them will be righted, like they were nothing but the children they had to stifle a long time ago: in a war with the past, with themselves, with forces they couldn’t understand. Sitting in the same room as Jesper’s father felt like they all put on some adults’ coats and desperately tried to fit in them. But it is just an illusion of course, because whatever kind of apologies this old man had to give them in place of the world, it means nothing to them. They are thieves and killers, the best of the worst the city had to offer, and what-ifs feel bitter and foreign to them, more unstable than card games, than the constant wave and push of the crowd.

But for a few hours, until their final heist together will be set in motion, they’re allowed to be tired, afraid, young. _In love._

Nina turns on her heels, presses to Matthias’ body with intent and affection. There’s no one else in the room, and she’s been dreaming of a warmth bath and a few minutes just with him for days. She’s never been spectacularly patient when it comes to Matthias.

His cheeks turn red, but his hand comes up to rest at her hip. She lowers her lashes, gazes up at him, licks her lips.

“Djel, Nina, you’re trying to kill me.”

“Would it make you kiss me earlier?”

Her smile stills into the kiss, his lips pressed against hers, the best feeling she has ever experienced. It’s not hard to follow his firm touches, hook a leg up around his waist, his hands moving lower, on her thighs and ass. He groans into the kiss, and fumbles, carrying her to the coach. He’s losing his mind with each of her touches, and when they finally break apart, there’s a triumphant flicker in her eyes, and he can’t even be angry that he’s been tricked into allowing himself what he thought he was so unworthy, unprepared for.

The clothes go easily, a tug at her waist, a slide over her shoulder; a thrust at his collarbones, a pull at the navel. She’s high on his presence, he’s mad at the knowledge she’s bare, and in his arms. They kiss desperately now, their bodies finding each other, and it’s a level of greatness, of good _(of wrong)_ they both didn’t know possible.

They move to the bathroom afterwards, Matthias following and listening to her pleasured laugh as she fills the huge tub with hot water and bubbles. Water splashes over the edge of the tub when Matthias joins her inside, and she just smiles, takes his fingers and plays with them, wiggles them in a way she does with her own toes.

They wash each other’s backs, make sure they are prepared for any scenario that might come up. It’s a way to avoid what really needs to be spoken between them, and she can’t help but notice how good they’ve gotten at this.

One of Matthias’ fingers trails the curve of her neck and Nina shudders, a small moan escaping between her lips. His touch becomes more urgent as he drags her to him, pressing her back to his chest in a copy of the position they’ve been in the first night they had to spend together. So many, terrible things changed between them since then; Nina feels a little light weighted at the thought.

“Nina,” Matthias murmurs, leaning to her left to kiss her bare shoulder, “promise me you’ll stay alive, my love.”

She turns, glaring straight into his eyes. “Only if you do.”

It’s a challenge; she knows he’ll never lie to her this way and it’s cruel of him to ask it of her. Something breaks inside him, and then a determination she knows so well takes over his features. They’re warriors and there’s no point in sugarcoating what going into battle ensues.

But for a few hours more, they’re a girl and a boy. _In love._ They make love again, slower, imprinting the pleasured faces, the aroused noises in their memories.

*******

Nina is terrible at goodbyes. Maybe that’s why she envies Kaz for the resolution with which he moves forward, keeping the past close to his heart anyway. Maybe that’s why she’s loved the Crows’ good luck so much – because it wasn’t a goodbye. Not truly.

But there’s no way to accept the loss of someone she’d thought she will have by her side for as long as she lived. There’s no way to gently accept the lost looks on her friends’ faces, to answer their question, to stifle the burning rage and need inside her. It is not right – to have gone through so much and be put down by a single bullet.

Her throat is sore and yet she feels like her scream never stropped, ringing over and over again in her ear, replayed each time with a stronger wave of sorrow and helplessness. When Inej draws closer to a last hug, Nina almost flinches, her eyes haphazardly scanning her friend, not a single word coming out of her mouth. She feels so unlike herself, so out of touch with reality, and she hates and understands herself for it at the same time.

Inej’s touch is kind, and so is her voice. “Promise me we’ll see each other again, Nina.”

Nina steels her gaze, straightens her posture, clutches Matthias’ hand harder in hers, though it’s quickly growing cold. “I promise.”

She wonders, as she drifts far away from this life she hated and loved equally, if a promise made to Matthias one desperate night might have still had him here, alive.

*******

She refuses to fall asleep, even when she is between her own people, out of danger’s reach, with so much money she doesn’t know what to do with it. For the first time, the open sea and the future feels suffocating and she clings to Matthias’ bloodied coat, a crumpled ball in her arms, and stays right next to him for the best part of the night and next day.

The other Grisha onboard cast worried glances her way, but she sees nothing but death taking over her lover, hears nothing but his voice saying _little red bird_ over and over again. She wants to pluck out her eyes, to stuff her ears, to put a bullet through her brain and just end it. It’s a new kind of torture and she wants to keep its secret deep in her heart, so no one will ever know how much this thing simply hurts.

She dreams of him, when she closes her eyes, bested by her efforts and all the sleepless nights before. Even in her dreams, the hollowness of his absence follows, and yet she can’t pinpoint exactly why it is so bad to let herself be cradled at his chest, hushed, his warmth breath against her cheek.  But his heart isn’t beating against hers, and, even in her dreams, she desperately tries to will it to life.

Death has followed her and has stuck to the skin of those she loves, she thinks, stupidly, and her eyes snap open, only to look into Matthias’ black _(wrong)_ ones. She screams, terrified, scrambling from under his frame, shying from his touch, knowing he is only a corpse she somehow brought to life in her sleep, made to move by her need to be comforted, to not be alone in this crazy job she is about to embark herself onto.

She can barely breath, chest heaving but no air coming in and she’s aware, in some distant part of her brain, that she’s simply going to shut off is she keeps going on like this. But Matthias is so much like the Matthias she knows and – and she tastes her own blood, as she bites into her tongue trying to concentrate. She hates herself with all the force of her rage for what she’s doing with his body, weak and unstable as she sits on this deck and tries to will the necessary force to send him away. The red stain around his stomach looks grotesque and unfamiliar enough and she focuses on it, imagining it is just another wound, on just another person.

When his hand comes into her field of vision, she almost loses all concentration, but the next second he collapses in her outstretched arms, and she sobs in his hair, miserable at her own weakness, bitter towards her own powers that, in the end, he started to think of as blessed.

Where is the goodness in her now? The honor she had felt upon being Grisha, the pleasure she took in being a soldier to match Matthias? Where has her determination shattered, making out of her the same distressed and crazy girl she’d been when he died in her arms?

She’s killing him all over again, and it's killing her all the same every time. 

Zoya and Genya arrive moments later, and find Nina holding his head in her lap, apologizing over and over again. It’s a terrible sight: their student crushed to this so soon, having to understand what losing feels like. Both elder Grisha have been in the war, have lost impossible and unthinkable things, but there’s no sight as powerful as the one of a human defeated by their own guilt.

Zoya barks orders for some warm coffee, releasing a confused passenger of their coat, moving it upon Nina’s shoulders. She’s never even felt the cold until the warm, fur-lined coat is around her. Genya kindly takes Nina’s arm, patiently dragging her away from Matthias. They make themselves comfortable in Zoya’s cabin, a tin of chocolate cookies opened and placed near Nina, the cup of coffee numbly warm, wrapped in one of her hands.

“You know, Zoya would have gone alone into the woods to find you, Nina,” Genya says, a smile on her face that almost makes Nina smiles as well. Almost. She takes a cookie instead, nibbling at it as she watches Zoya’s reaction.

Her face sours in a scowl, but does not deny the claim. Nina feels like a spoiled child, finally learning about the care the woman she admires puts into her work, into her pupils. It’s comforting to know that someone cared back then, that someone still cares. Reckless, shameless and proud as she is, Nina feels quite humbled right now by this information.

“Nina Zenik. The cards have already been dealt; you could tell us about your adventurous year.”

It’s a kind offer, the kind of comfort and time she would not have been given if she were on the battlefield instead, if she were still a simple Heartrender, and not also a Crow, a special new kind of weapon too. She starts slowly, pondering over the words, the truth so much harder to come out of her mouth after so many lies, after she covered it at every step. With time, she feels herself relax in the presence of these people she loves and has known for so long.

She does Matthias the service of talking about his deeply ingrained hate, of his fiercely burning belief that there is still some good left on both sides – enough to make the whole thing better. She chokes back sobs when she raises her head and proclaims to try to be the herald of change, instead of death, nightmares, war.

They neither approve nor disapprove of her plans, knowing she’ll do as she pleases anyway.

*******

The moment Nina steps on Fjerdan shore, her legs weaken under her and she buckles under the weight of Matthias’ body. She feels dizzy and lost and she almost throws up the meal she had on the ship, meager as it was. She has felt like this for the past weeks, like a compass in her has broken, unable to find the right destination, the pivotal point of her life gone, gone, gone. _Dead_ , Matthias’ voice says in her head, and she closes her eyes against the sound.

It has been following her. _Let go_ , Inej had told her, but she finds herself unable to stop imagining Matthias’ laugh, Matthias’ scowl, Matthias’ hand in her. Matthias’ anger, Matthias’ reluctance and Matthias’ blush.

_Matthias._

But now she is back in Fjerda, the cold familiarly biting into her skin, the white landscape making her eyes hurt in blissful, wanted pain. She refused the help of any other Grisha, unwilling to put her kind into danger after they barely escaped Ketterdam and its twisted laws, unfair treatment. She takes a deep breath, trying to calm herself, refusing the familiar call of death, focusing on taking one step after another.

_I know you can do it, my love._

Her step falters, and she refuses to look over her shoulder and realize he’s not right there, her throat already constricting painfully in effort to keep herself from crying. She has saved him on a shore once; she’s dragging his body now.

She continues the walk, slowly, but more determined. The snow and ice crack under her heavy foot, and she’s glad for the thick jacket she’s wearing, the warm boots. She can see the path she has to take in a mental map she relearned while on the ship, and she wants to reach the place before the night falls and it becomes more difficult dealing with steep road.

Only when she’s out of the view, hidden between the thick forests, she takes a break, resting her body against a tree, letting Matthias’ weight lean on her. She wonders what everyone else is doing, if they managed to build their empires already, as she know they might be prone to do. Her glorious, brilliant friends, whom she misses worse than she missed her country during a whole year of being away.

It’s hard to make herself move again, but she clings to Matthias’ voice, the promise she made him, her yearning to know they might see each other again, in whatever lies at the other side of life. Logically, she understands she’s a little delusional, that she clings to the memory of his voice on her own, that if there’s haunting done, it’s her and her inability to let go that might disturb Matthias’ final rest.

When she reaches the clearing, she’s glad she won’t have to fight anyone. This – this is the place where they first met, and she smiles when she remembers Matthias’ romantic ideas. This seems proper. She stuffs her mouth with a cookie from her pocket and starts digging.

She’s glad for the action, for the repetitive mechanics of it, and she focuses on the movement of her hands, the pressure at her shoulders, her calves. She’s buried enough of her own now to know how deep to go, and she allows herself 5 minutes for the real goodbye before she will cover him up in earth, bringing him back to his gods, bringing herself to the end of ends.

“Matthias,” she says, pressing her hand to his heart. “Wait for me.”

She dabs her sleeve at her eyes, mutters a prayer in Fjerdan, the one Matthias seemed to prefer each time she did something maddening. She returns to her job, body shaking with silent sobs. By the time she’s done, she feels lighter, like now there really is no chance of having him come back, of raising him from the dead. The finality of everything is a way out of her sorrow and – and she takes it.

_Go, my love. Go._

 

*******

It takes her two days to reach Ravka. The first night, she is followed by the howls of wolves and she doesn't feel afraid at all. It's the call of mourning for one of their own, a wild, loyal man dead and finally received where he belongs, between his wild, loyal peers. She knows mourning, so she walks the frozen wilderness with the confidence of a druskelle. 

The first night, she unburies crows and foxes, keeps their bones as weapons in her pockets. 

She crosses the border unseen, a released but defeated sigh escaping her lips when she finally comes back home. An old aching in her soul finally goes away, but something has changed in the way she views her country. At a deep level, she will never be able to forgive her fellow Grisha _(herself)_ for the nightmares they have brought, for the fear they have ingrained in the heart of a whole nation.

She thinks of a ten year old Matthias, forced to stifle his humanity just to save the one left in others.

In Ravka, she follows the more unknown roads, allows herself to listen to the call of everything dead around her. If she focuses hard enough, she can make out some remains pulsing brighter and she calls out to them. They’re all unfound amplifiers, and Nina takes it all on her, molds the bones in grotesque jewelries, her power growing more and more with each touch against her skin. It’s almost like she’s on parem again, this time brimming with the rightness of her skills. She refuses to ever be powerless again.

At some point, she finds travelers, merchants. She sits between them, chatting less than usual and listening to the changes her country went through in her absence. With each new acquaintance, she gets closer and closer to where she belongs.

She marches in the Little Palace like she’s walking towards the pyre. Her guilt burns brighter than any fire. It takes one glance from Zoya to be ushered through heavy doors, washed and dressed presentably enough. She doesn’t even get to hug any of her friends – and although she knew this will be a result of her actions, it still hurts.

She’s brought in front of the king. Dressed in her crimson kefta, a soldier for now, none of her amplifiers show. Not the low necklace, not the bracelet, and when she lifts her head, she’s stricken by her previous mistake. Even under Genya’s work, she should have been able to recognize the ruler of this country in the man who asked her back to her first role.

But she can’t, not truly, not like before. King Nikolai remembers the fierceness with which she held to a Fjerdan warrior, and he knows it too.

“You made yourself one of the most powerful Grisha, but how you use that power will prove what your worth is exactly.”

She straightens under his words, looks the king right in the eyes.

“Very well.”

*******

She spends weeks running between the library, reading fairytales and Grisha folklore, trying to understand her newfound power, and training. She had Fabrikators make two beautiful bone knives and the star-shaped, sharp weapons Inej’s enemy used. She likes the firmness of them in her hands, the way they listen to her call. She still caries crows’ bones in her pocket, her personal luck charm.

When she finally pulls on Fjerdan clothes again, she’s plumper and better than before. She appreciates the pattern knitted into the vest, the comfortable way in which the dress clings to her body. She has a mirror to look at herself this time and – maybe she can understand why Matthias loved it so much.

Zoya throws her worried glances, a mission like this one, on her own, being tough enough. But she’s good. She has one of Wylan’s bombs, in case things go really bad, put together by Kuwei from a pattern the blond has sent her a while ago. She has the promise she made to Matthias as her driven force, and she’s ready to take over his country, charm her way to where she needs to be. Familiar enough, but panic still bubbles up inside her when she thinks of how she always thought he’ll be doing this with her.

_Matthias._

Nina doesn’t want anyone to be worried on her behalf. If she jokes less, if she sometimes eats too much and sometimes too little, if she throws unexpected tantrums from time to time – well, they must understand that she lost the most important person to her, that nothing comes easy to her anymore.

“No mourners,” she murmurs before leaving the others behind.

_No funerals._

She wants to scream, to have him leave her alone. To have herself leave him alone.

Nina stops in the closest town, a fishing one, druskelle gone for now. She stops at the tavern, juts in with her hips swaying and a troubled expression on her face. Two men are already on their feet, wanting to help her but not quite daring to touch her, and she gratefully takes the closest chair; orders a drink. She says nothing to answer the questioning glances, her eyes fixed on the innkeeper.

Fjerdans hate the witches, but with the mess in Ketterdam, they fear how powerless the druskelle have been more, doubt growing in their heart. Nina doesn’t want to smile at the news, so she nibs at her lips, leaning closer to the talking men, feigning cluelessness.

“What do you mean?”

They laugh at her, but they talk anyway. Fjerdan girls shouldn’t normally want to know this kind of things, but they’re drunk and pleased at the attention, and they give her all the information she needs to know. She finds herself with one of the men’s hand above her knee, the other hungrily looking down at her cleavage, manners apparently forgotten. She rises indignantly, throwing an upset look at the innkeeper.

“Don’t touch me like that,” she snarls at the two men, and she can see from the corner of her eye the innkeeper moving, politely asking them to leave. She feigns a scared tremble, humbles herself in front of the other man. Her thank you doesn’t seem to do much to him, but when she asks him for something to work and a warm bed, he doesn’t refuse her.

Nina becomes a waitress, the form of her body and her loud laugh enough to attract more patrons. The work is honest and she slaps away the occasional stray hand. She likes listening to the rumors, befriending the ladies in the market, making the serious men laugh. It reminds her that these are people like any other, having nothing to do with the war.

Then one morning, as she rises from the warmth of the blankets, the room spins around her and she makes a dash for the bathroom, emptying her stomach. She feels weak and she misses Matthias’ kind touches and whispered comfort, when she was at the lowest point of her life. She curls into herself on the floor, mind dully working on what she needs to do today, deciding to skip over the breakfast and lay there for a while longer.

The druskelle arrive that afternoon, glorious and proud and deadly. Nina stops in her tracks, grateful she is not holding anything, for it would have been on the floor, shattered at the sight. The blonde wig itches her head worse than usual, and she tries to smile at each of them, knowing their purses filled and mission obvious. She thinks of the Grisha siblings living just a few kilometers away, and feigns illness so she can slip away. She enters their small hut breathless and with aching legs.

“Go to Ravka.”

She doesn’t allow them the time to pack; they run immediately. She throws the bomb at the building, bitter that she has to take these people’s past and home. The Grisha are grateful, and she only hurries them to run faster; if fate is kind, they will see each other again. Nina spends an hour scrubbing the smell of smoke from her skin and clothes, and only then she returns. The druskelle are drinking in a foul mood, and she takes the fact that they’re all still alive as a victory.

The sickness continues to take her and each evening catches her sleepy and slow in her moves. She does the math, how long it’s been since her last bleeding, and the answer is not even surprising her.

_Too long._

She squeezes her eyes shut, hooks an arm protectively around her belly. She feels like her own grief is ten times larger this time, and she spends the night crying herself to sleep. The next morning she eats one last cake and leaves the town.

Nina only has to say one word to be understood, to have her people know that her condition is bad, that she feels small and helpless and too little.

“Matthias.”

Then she drops in Zoya’s arms, exhausted.

*******

“Is it his?” Genya asks, not unkindly. Nina only nods, her body knowing Matthias’ touch only, her heart only Matthias’ love.

She refuses to go on field missions anymore, currently focusing on keeping herself healthy and out of danger, at least until the baby is born. She’s barely turned 18 and she is going to be a mother – something that feels more daunting and complicated than everything that has happened to her up until now.

It takes her two weeks to get used to the idea and a full course meal to take it as part of who she is right now: soldier, crow, Grisha, pregnant. She sends no letters to announce any of her changes, any of her plans, but one evening she corners the king on a hallway, asking to speak with him. At the end of the discussion, she can add another word to her list: ambassador.

*******

She empties most of her fortune in the construction of an embassy. Fjerda and Ravka are not at war anymore, and if they want Grisha, she’ll be there to welcome what they have to offer: the hate and the fights, the disdain and terrified awe. It’s not how she imagined trying doing this, but many things have changed indeed.

She sends and receives urgent letters from what she wants to have as her help, and from a very special Wraith that can track most anything. She leaves an hour later, her feet aching and wanting a hot bath rather than the freezing road that awaits her. Yet, she does not complain, settling for eating some waffles as the carriage rolls towards her destination.

At the border, she changes her clothes and takes a horse on her own to the closest port. Inej’s boat is the biggest one at the pier, and Nina yelps when she fails to notice her friend until she’s being hugged from the side. She likes seeing Inej like this: freer and happier, her life finally falling into place. She kisses her cheeks, clasps her hands and thanks her.

“How’s Kaz? Wylan and Jesper?”

Inej smiles in reply, passing through the streets with no worry of who might look wearily at them two. She opens the doors to a small restaurant, all warm fire and comfortable chairs. They order for waffles at the same time, and they both smile.

“The Barrel is Kaz’s, basically.”

“The poor guys,” Nina says, mouth filled with food, thinking of how, brick by brick, Kaz will be the last one standing. Brick by brick she wants to build the foundation for something new. Inej leans closer to Nina, whispering.

“I caught Wylan and Jesper making out on Kaz’s desk.”

Nina gasps. “No, they didn’t!”

“Totally did.” Inej replies, cutting through her waffles with a satisfied smile on her face. It’s good to have Nina back, to feel this warmth and friendship that she missed since they parted. They remain there for a while even after finishing, time on their side for now, and they speak of their lives, their common friends, a purpose. Then –

“How are you, Nina?”

She gasps, not knowing how to truly reply to this. That she’s still dreaming of him, that she still has to fight with all her being the need to bring him back to her? Something tells her that Inej figured this out from the first second she laid her eyes on her, so instead she takes a deep breath and says –

“I’m pregnant.”

Inej drops her cup of coffee in her lap, and does not move from the chair even as the drink is hot and spreading rapidly on her clothes. A second later, Nina has to struggle to breath, the hug strong and desperate in the support it brings her.

“You’re amazing, Nina Zenik.”

Nina smiles in Inej’s hair. “You haven’t even seen my new weapons yet,” she whispers, grateful.

*******

 Most evenings, she either has arguments with Zoya over petty, insignificant details, or she’s lying in bed, warm cup of tea next to her and papers sprawled around her. She works without rest, frustrated every time she stomps over a sea of legal inquiries, to the point she wants to scream at everyone that they are missing the most important part. That’s when she knows she needs a break of some kind, so she downs her new uniform, black as the endlessly dark sea that once torn her country, a symbol of her new status and her new abilities, a warning for how much deadly, how much merciless a Grisha can be under bad circumstances.

But in the comfort of the Little Palace, she’s the storm that brings the wind of change. Most of their Grisha in training come for Fjerda, and no matter how cruel the world might have been to them, there’s at least one person who showed them kindness, and it’s hard to hate the glimmer of hope. She’s the Grisha who survived what no other did and came out with bones howling of death, and although they can’t pinpoint it exactly, they understand that Nina Zenik is dangerous and strong. And they gape in awe, they bow with respect, they tremble with fear.

She knows all of their names, their abilities and their progress, and although they’re trained for combat, a soldier being made out of them, Nina likes to imagine that they won’t need to use these abilities in such purposes for long. She doesn’t directly speak to any of them though, her steps taking her always to the only boy that has been able to glimpse another side of her, has seen her live some other life.

Kuwei speaks to her in her own language nowadays and actually smiles, dimples and warm eyes, every time he catches her hovering by his doors. There’s happiness where before was despair and sadness, and they’re bound with the knowledge that they survived together. It’s enough to keep them friends for life, she thinks, and the tea drinking at odd hours, gossiping and training certainly helps. It’s another world they always end up talking about, another time that neither can return to, not the same. It’s bittersweet, indeed. But when the night falls too deeply, when she sighs too tiredly, Kuwei takes her hand, drags her to his own bed, and they fall asleep together.

Some mornings, before she even gets to drink any tea, she stomps through Nikolai’s hallways, shoves documents in his face, asks for help in a manner that doesn’t make it seem like asking at all. He laughs, invites her to eat breakfast by his side, and she’s grateful for his fancy chairs and his kind smiles. It’s a treacherous friendship that they are building – he is still the man that rules superior over her, no matter power, no matter ideals. He could end her life, her work, her banter with just a word, but he never does. It’s a kindness that some days overwhelms her to tears, and she blames it on useless hormones. Nikolai laughs in her face, joyous and a little embarrassed himself, before proclaiming his trust as an obvious result of her capabilities.

He starts involving her in the country’s matters more often than not, sharing a table with Zoya and Genya, dumbfounded that somehow she sits on equal grounds with those she looked up to all her life. She listens attentively, she thinks of her Crow friends before answering any question – their plans and executions still the best and most daring she’s ever seen. Maybe it’s wrong to fuel the movement of a country by a gang’s rules, but none of them are made of good blood, they’ve all have only honourable hopes, but not honorable means. It’ll have to be enough, it is enough.

And when Nikolai gets tired with his titles, when the reproachful stares of the two he’s fought along for so long are too familiar, too much of a routine – he finds himself in Nina’s chambers, sharing drinks late into the night. Sharing stories and pains, childish ideas and scars. He likes making her laugh, because she shines even more, blindingly, but she’ll always be followed by shadows too dark and deep to truly comprehend them. He’s known loss too, but he can’t truly understand the way it twisted Nina, changing her with every breath she takes, a forever-going process of growth she fully embraces, hoping it’ll be big enough to stir others to action too. During those nights, it seems like she is unstoppable.

*******

Nina has always been dramatic, has always been into theatrics – and she finds a special kind of joy when it works on the people around her. She’s been at her rawest in one moment only during her life, a moment she doesn’t want to remember too often (he’s _dying, dying, **dead**_ ) – but this is very, very close.

Her screams pierce the night. Nikolai suspends a political meeting to sit in front of her room and desperately wait for a new life to be born. Zoya bites at her lips, throwing worrying glances towards him and Genya. They shift in place, all nervous and tired of waiting, finding themselves surprisingly attached to the fate of this student, of this future child.

When Kuwei stomps out the room, tired, hair sticking to his forehead, but smiling – Nikolai breaks into a cheer, and Nina’s tiredly laughing. She has a daughter, blonde like her father’s, eyes dark like her mother’s – and she loves her more than she loved anything before. Her mentors are kind in their wishes, awed and admiring when their gaze find the new bundle of life in her arms. Kuwei sits the night by her side, hand in hers, and she’s so grateful for all the love she’s receiving, dead set on sharing it, tenfold.

*******

During that night, wolves are howling in Ravka’s heart. The next morning, in front of Nina’s chambers, one awaits, unbothered by the fearful glances thrown its way. Nina sighs, pained at its sight, but ordering its safety anyway. Her child is as much from Fjerda as she is from Ravka, and whatever of Matthias’ blood flows in her veins, this is his legacy.

_Goodbye, my love._

This time, it doesn’t hurt to say it back. Not when he has left her with so many things.

*******

She recovers fast enough. She starts receiving words of congratulations and gifts from far-away places, and she smiles at the knives and one pair of socks (gods bless Jesper’s father and his common sense), knowing all will be well, with such protection wished from her Ketterdam friends. There’s one letter missing, and she finds why a little bit afterwards.

Nina doesn’t think it’s possible to forget the sound of Kaz’s cane tapping on the floor, if you’ve heard it even once, with the pride of being a Crow booming into your chest. It’s an axis of her life as much as her Grisha powers, or the baby peacefully sleeping in a cradle by her desk. So when the door to her office opens, she doesn’t raise her head from her documents, doesn’t acknowledge the servant trying to introduce her visitor. Instead, quite simply, she breathes his name.

“Kaz.”

He _smiles_ at her – more a wolfish grin than anything else, but still a form of smile and she finds herself taken aback at such an obvious change produced in him. He’s still dressed in his signature black, and while the gloves are still present, the fingertips are cut off, allowing a stark pale to contrast with the rest of him. She sticks out a hand, mesmerized, hopeful – and he takes it, his hand, where she can feel it, warm and vibrating with life. She gapes at him, more of a ghostly vision than anything else – especially as his next move is to go and greet her baby, to take her in his arms, to allow the soft and tender grasp of her hands around one of his fingers.

“Nina. Flies will go in your mouth if you don’t close it.”

“There are no flies in winter,” she snaps back, but closing her mouth nonetheless. She rises to her feet, closer to his height this way, making him realer. She feels light-headed, sick to the deepest cracks of her heart, and she stumbles towards him almost drunk on a life she can never return to, she can barely recognize because of all the time that passed.

“How dare you,” she sneers, a hand flying to slap his shoulder “to appear here like this,” his lack of reaction makes her repeat her action, harder this time “after ignoring all my letters all this time!”

She tries it again, and this time a muscle twitches at the corner of his mouth, so she frowns harder, pushes a finger to his chest. Pushes again to make sure her words are getting through his thick skull. And again, to stop the tears brimming in her eyes.

“I could pull out your heart and stomp on it, you damn idiot,” but there’s no fire in her words, not when Kaz cradles her daughter so kindly close to his heart, not when he is so careful when putting her back in her bed, looking so fondly that something in Nina’s chest snaps.

“I know,” he replies, turning towards her, allowing her the full force of his attention. She feels suddenly small and weak, unfamiliar with this presence in front of her, scared of what it all means.

“ _Kaz,_ ” she breathes again, softer, voice cracking on the last letter, as he steps closer to her, an arm around her elbow shoving her at his chest. It’s… weird, definitely. But she bursts with all that she contained inside all this time, a river of tears flowing out of her, staining his coat. Desperate, broken, painful moans accompanying her hiccups, fingers so tightly dug in his skin – a freedom she couldn’t afford herself before, not with how hard she had to keep it together, now with how much had to be done, still has to be done.

When she eventually calms down, he simply tells her: “We have peace to build.”

He says nothing more on the topic. He doesn’t tell her he’ll stay here, but thinks it obvious by his coming in the first place. He doesn’t tell her anything of Ketterdam, and she pieces the missing information together later on, from others’ letters. How Jesper rules over the Barrel now, how Wylan continues with his trades, helped by Inej. How having a purpose – all of them – turned them into better, stronger, stranger people. It’s not that different with her either, she supposed.

And in that first afternoon with an old friend by her side, she freezes in a courtyard, familiarizing Kaz with a big wolf, making him repeat her daughter’s name until the want to have a family to share this joy she’s building in her life goes away – for she has it now, always had it, no matter how far away.

*******

Diplomacy is not that different from the bargains struck in the middle of the Barrel, in markets, at street corners, behind red drapes in a whorehouse. It’s an advantage that Ravka has in their group of ambassadors, made of criminals and renegades. This political relation between the two countries is new and fragile anyway, there’s nothing much to lose to begin with: so they push desperately.

Nina bites and chews the head of the lower ranked Fjerdans sent her way, until the ones she’s discussing with are those at the top of the power chains. She knows they are the ones most against her wants, she knows those are the ones who hate her most desperately, she knows those are the ones that moan in disgust when they have to touch her hands, or tremble in fear when they see her dark robes, her amplifiers. Some might say she’s a bit sadistic in her meetings: threatening, promising, hurting. She comes with good intentions – too idealistic ones might say, especially when she now has the reputation of an urban legend, not when she’s the stuff of children’s nightmares in this land. But they all, no exception, soften at the sight of her daughter: the image of their people, innocent in ways they’ve been only at her young age, in ways they can’t return to, no matter how hard they might try.

So she pushes: this is what she’s fighting for. This is what she wants: for any child to know peace, for this softness they have towards this child to eventually grow to encompass all, no matter the lineage. _Her_ child she clarifies later on, only to see them snap to attention, to understanding that one of their ones touched her in ways intimate enough to born life. It’s a kind of animalistic thought process that’s going on in their heads, she must admit: that if it happened once, it will happen again. That if a bond strong enough to bring forth _family_ grew, then there must be some kind of truth in her words. She repeats the same words, over and over again, until they eventually crack the ideology they’ve been charmed with all their life.

She’s ruthless. She cuts at her wrists, to show to a full room of Fjerdans that she bleeds the same way as them. She presents examples upon examples: Grisha children finding friends, solace and comfort in one of their own. Her own people nursing back to health their soldiers, in fear they’ll come back to kill them, but still doing it because, above all, they are humans. She repeats the same words, over and over again.

And when it doesn’t seem to work, she invokes his name. His heroism, to touch their patriotism and warrior souls. His love for her, her love for him: to let them know she’s capable of it, too. That they can allow themselves to feel something else but blood thirst and bone-deep tiredness. And in the middle of it all: her daughter, both of them at the same time, and neither – something totally new, but lovely and kind. She becomes a symbol of what it could be, of the future that’s already happening and existing in the present.

Kaz watches it all unfold, from two steps at her back, and nods in agreement. He’s swallowed regret over and over again, and has found himself able to breathe only when he had let it go, only when he had accepted something new. It’s a slow and tiring process though, he knows it best indeed, but, he thinks, if there’s anyone who can make it happen, who can speed things up at least by a bit, then that someone else is none other but Nina Zenik.

*******

Kaz’s approach is something quite different. He listens, agrees – and then does as he pleases anyway. He’s not the direct threat and fear of power, not in the overwhelming way that Nina is. He’s subtler; chills running down their backs, the deep tone of his voice freezing their hearts in his chest. He’s the beast that smiles kindly before dealing a deadly blow, and he rapidly builds himself a reputation. What his side knows is that he gets the job done fast – and it’s enough. No one dares question him, and he doesn’t really care much as long as Nina beams at him at every good news he manages to deliver her way.

The two fall into a familiar rhythm. Most of their days are filled with each other, they have to manage a new way of acting and reacting, but Nina’s pleased at how easy everything comes. He dearly loves her daughter, he talks about her future with the pride she thinks must have been in Matthias too, if he were still alive. She’s sometimes aware of how young they truly are, what a long life they still have ahead of them – or hope to, anyway. She’s surprised that she’s not surprised at all that all his plans involve him staying, involve her and involve her child as well. She has seen it happen, has expected it from that first day. Kaz might be a lot of bad things, and might have done a lot of monstrous things – but she can’t see him as such. Not when the first words she thinks of if she has to describe him is _loyal to the bone._ They’re a flock, they stick together. No one gets left behind, no one is left struggling alone. Maybe this is why he came. She hasn’t found in her the courage to question him outright; afraid it might make him run away. As long a she has him, she doesn’t care. Wills herself not to care.

*******

One day, she has a visitor – a soldier looking specially to talk to her. Her heart is beating in her ears as she passes through hallways, dragging her robes closer to her body, for the first time in who knows how long a chill running through her bones, impossible to chase away. She feels like throwing up when she finds him looking out the window, at her daughter running around with her wolf companion, and she snaps harsher than she actually means to.

“What do you want?”

His eyes meet hers – and she knows. She knows this is the man that stole everything from her. For a second, she can barely control her powers, but if he feels the spike of death at his throat, he says nothing about it.

“I know it’s… late, and probably useless. But still, if it can help in any way, I want to apologize.”

“No. No, no, no,” she says, lost. Her eyes are looking around the room, helpless in finding herself alone with this man, helpless in knowing how much she learnt to depend on others.

“I want to help you.”

“ **No,”** she says, sharper this time, accompanying it with pain to his chest. She knows she’s unfair – after all, the power of people to change is what she’s advocating so desperately for, but she doesn’t want it from him. Doesn’t want to accept the fact that she will have to forgive the culprit of her demise. Doesn’t want to forgive the twist of fate that brought her to this point. She feels sick, sick, _sick_.

He looks out the window again, a very faint smile at his lips. “Is it his?” he asks, hands moulding into fists – and she wonders if he is haunted in the same way as her by that one moment when he pulled a trigger against the love of her life.

“Yes,” she answers plainly, willing herself to calm down. He waits for several seconds more before turning away and leaving, and Nina does the same: slowly in the beginning, then she starts running, harder and harder – until the breath is cut in her throat, until the air hurts her lungs, until she can feel nothing more but the pulsing in her legs.

Kaz finds her hours later, shaking in an armchair still. Without saying a word, he drags his own chair close to her, pushes a cup of warm beverage in one of her hands, and takes the other in his.

*******

As time passes, more often than not, Nina crashes in her office seat before she can make it to her bed.  Her daughter is growing so fast; she can barely keep up with the changes. She’s not surprised when her first words are actually in her father’s language, but she laughs joyfully when the first sentence is a mix of three. She wants to keep her away from the hurts of the world for as much as possible, and the moment when a Fjerdan soldier kindly greets the two of them when out in the markets, she thinks she might not have to. Things are beginning to change, at least here – the beliefs of peasants more difficult to sway. It will take more time, more effort; some days, she feels like it will never end. It probably won’t – kindness a legacy and work that will have to be passed down through generations, and she sighs each time her thoughts take her there.

As time passes, more often than not, Nina crashes in another’s bed, rather than her own. It’s just that she yearns for warmth and companionship – she’s not even 25 yet, too young to already give up herself to work only. It’s easy at first, Kaz’s hand tangled in her hair as he lulls her to sleep with Ketterdam tales and woes he heard from letters from their friends. She brings chocolates in thanks – that they eat during new discussions, again.

The first time he asks her to sleep in his room instead of stumbling her way, half gone already with sleep, to her own, she takes pride in how she makes him blush by undressing herself in front of him, down to her almost see through under dress. He says nothing, and spends the night awake, glued to the side of the bed furthest away from where she is sleeping – but repeats the request again the next time. Until, eventually, the morning catches them with tangled limbs together. Until, eventually, servants come to find her in his chambers instead of hers. Until, eventually, he finds on his desk one of her perfume bottles, and in his dressers, her favourite dress. Until, eventually, she finds it easier to wear his shirts tucked in leather, riding pants – part challenging him, part maddening him.

It never goes further than that. Nina never pushes, understanding despite the hypnotic way in which she applies bold red to her lips each morning before she departs for her tasks, knowing full well he is watching her in the mirror, from where he is still sprawled on the bed. However pleasurable she finds her flirting, she never tries it on him. Any step in their relationship has been taken by him, and he finds her all the lovelier for it. He’s grateful for all of it: for the companionship without the pressure of deeper skinship, for the love that remains felt only in the erupting sounds of his heart, for the comfort he finds in her arms – and never further.

Then, one day, she looks at him, her gaze touching the deepest part of his heart, and asks:

“Why?”

 _Why did you come? Why did you stay? Why do we love each other now?_ He knows all of the questions in that one word.

“You know why.”

He knows she knows the answers already, too.

**Author's Note:**

> If Leigh Bardugo is allowed to have plot holes, then I am too.  
> I've started this fic two years ago, and I think it's just... finally the time for me to allow it life. Obviously, this is why the ending is hurried. If I were to explain all I initially wanted to, this would have been a way longer story. But, this is it.


End file.
